I put Emi Takada’s ‘Why Did I Choose You’  on my Daily playlist a while back, and I have been meaning to write about her for a while now. For some reason, whenever a track from her album comes on, I always sit and pay attention. I like her a lot. She has a very expressive voice and there is such joy in her voice, so much so that even if the mood of what she is singing is melancholy, it never feels like a total downer. Something about that really appeals to me. Takada grew up in Japan but spent time both in Texas and New York. I think she is all Japanese, as far as jazz vocal sensibility. You can tell, just like a lot of Japanese people, how much she loves jazz and at the same time I feel that Asian sentimentality by the way she expresses lyrics in her love songs. You can sense that in the title track, and even in songs that are tangentially about live, like ‘It Might As Well Be Spring.’ And her jazz chops are there in Blue Skies, where duets with Marion Cowings, who taught her jazz.  This album is a joy to listen to, and I don’t think I will be taking it off my playlist.